Masks mandatory for all Victorian aged care workers

All residential and home support aged care workers in Victoria will now be required to wear face-masks.

Welcome to The Medical Republic‘s COVID Catch-Up.

It’s the day’s COVID-19 news into one convenient post. Got any tips, comments or feedback? Email me at bianca@biancanogrady.com.

20 July

• All Victorian aged care workers now required to wear face-masks.
• Lorna Jane falls foul of TGA with ‘antiviral’ clothing claim.
• Contacting tracing study finds low spread from children but higher in 10-19 year olds.
• CDC answers questions on bushfire fighting and COVID-19.
• SARS-CoV-2 RNA found in blood donation six weeks after symptoms resolved
• Batemans Bay outbreak has ACT and NSW nervous.

• All residential and home support aged care workers in Victoria will now be required to wear face-masks, says Health Minister Greg Hunt.
  In response to growing demand, the Federal Government is releasing an additional one million masks from its stockpile, in addition to several million already provided by state and federal governments. Aged care providers can request additional PPE by emailing AgedCareCOVIDPPE@health.gov.au
• A Brisbane clothing company that tried to cash in on COVID-19 panic by touting “anti-virus activewear” has been slapped with an almost $40,000 fine from the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
  Lorna Jane claimed the activewear protected against infectious disease, which brought the full wrath of the Therapeutic Goods Act – specifically related to unlawful advertising – down on its head.
• A large contact-tracing study from South Korea has found a secondary transmission rate of nearly 12% among household contacts of index cases, and nearly 2% among non-household contacts.
  The study of 59,073 contacts of 5,706 patients, published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, also showed a lower rate of positive household and non-household contacts when the index case was aged nine years or younger, but not when they were aged 10-19 years.
• In what may be a harbinger of additional challenges to come in Australia this summer, the US Centers for Disease Control has issued advice to bushfire fighters on how to do their jobs without increasing the risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19.
  Given firefighters often travel all over the state and country to fight fires – as regularly occurs in Australia – there are concerns that this could spread outbreaks. The CDC advised that during the fire season, members of each fire crew should make the effort where possible to operate and isolate as a unit, to minimise transmission of the virus between crews.
  They recommended where possible that crew arriving from other locations socially-distance themselves for 14 days, and limit close interactions with local crew. They also recommended cloth face coverings when using shared living spaces and common areas.
  The advice also noted that while there have not yet been studies on the impact of exposure to bushfire smoke and the risk of COVID-19, but research suggests that smoke exposure could increase the risk and severity of respiratory infections.
• SARS-CoV-2 RNA has been detected in the blood of a healthy blood donor, 40 days after she recalled experiencing mild respiratory symptoms but was not tested for COVID-19.
  A report in the Annals of Internal Medicine describes the case of a woman who donated blood that was later found to be positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. The woman was healthy at the time of the donation, but when informed of the finding said she had experienced a sore throat and body aches – but no fever – which had resolved around six weeks prior to donating blood.
  The authors of the paper stressed that the infectivity of the blood was unknown. “Taken together, these data suggest that this donor posed a limited but uncertain risk to the safety of the blood supply.”
• Concerns are growing about new hotspots in NSW, which now include Batemans Bay after eight cases were connected to the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club. NSW Health has asked anyone who attended the club on the 13-17 July to get tested and self-isolate, even if they don’t have any symptoms. The south coast outbreak is likely to make the ACT government jittery, given the area is a favourite holiday destination for Canberrans.
  The Crossroads Hotel cluster in south-west Sydney has grown to 45 cases, and five new cases are linked to the Thai Rock Restaurant in Stockland Mall Wetherill Park.
  Three more deaths were reported in Victoria on Sunday, bringing the national total of lives lost to COVID-19 to 122. The Victorian health department updates now also include the total number of healthcare workers infected, which currently stands at 418, including 166 active cases.
  A note on the daily COVID-19 infection figures below: they are taken each morning from the Federal health department’s website, which updates at 9pm each night. Different states are accounting for their daily COVID-19 numbers at different times of day, so the numbers shown here may look different to the numbers announced by the states throughout the day.
  There are also constant corrections going on, because some cases are accidently double-counted, there are the occasional false positives, and there are also historical cases occasionally being added to state totals that may not be announced or include by those states.
  Here are the latest confirmed COVID-19 infection rates around Australia to 9pm Sunday:
  National – 11,802, with 122 deaths
  ACT – 113
  NSW – 3568
  NT – 31
  QLD – 1071
  SA – 444
  TAS – 228
  VIC – 5696
  WA – 651